ADHD – What Do You Believe?

“Your thoughts create your reality.”
~Author Unknown

No matter how many times I hear this, it just might be the most important factor in finding success.  Whether success to you means:

• A clean room
• Better grades at school
• No more temper tantrums
• 5 minutes of peace
• Sleeping in on Saturday morning
• Seeing your child laugh
• Not crying
• Not hiding

Success means many things to many people.  So when I speak of success – I mean in the most general sense possible.  I refer to success in a way that allows you to define it any way that you so choose.

Success to me, in terms of supporting parents of children with ADHD, is when a mother or father finds a little extra joy in helping their child.  That’s success!  Success is when a mother says to me, “You’ve helped us so much.”  A lot of times, I never find out just what happens.

But enough about me…

This post started out with a focus on “beliefs.”  What you or anyone else in your child’s life believes about ADHD is really going to dictate how they respond to that child.

It’s a known fact, yet it gets overlooked every single day:

• We respond to people based on what we think of them.

If a teacher identified a student as being gifted – she and other teachers respond to that child a certain way.  If a mentor thinks a child is special, he treats the child that way.

Think about other areas of life where this happens.

• What do you think about salesman?  Car salesman in general?

Now, how do those beliefs help you or hurt you when you go to buy a car.  It doesn’t even matter if it is true – because in your mind, you have already decided.

The same happens for a child struggling with ADHD.